Why Are Manufacturing Digital Strategies Decoupled: The Differential Impact of Institutional Pressure and the Moderating Effect of Digital Change Cognition

Abstract

Abstract: Institutional pressure has shaped the digital strategy environment of manufacturing enterprises, but given the long cycle, high risk and low effectiveness of digital investment, some enterprises just pay lip service to digital strategy in order to enjoy financial subsidies and other preferential policies, resulting in a decoupling phenomenon of ‘discrepancy between words and deeds’ in their digital strategies. Therefore, exploring the mechanism underlying the phenomenon is crucial to boosting the digital transformation of enterprises. Based on decoupling theory and change cognition theory, this paper explores the differential impact of industry and regional institutional pressure on corporate digital strategies, and examines the moderating effect of digital change cognition. The paper takes Chinese A-share manufacturing firms listed between 2010 and 2020 as the research sample and uses a fixed-effect model for empirical testing. The results show that: (1) Industry institutional pressure positively affects substantive digital strategies(SUDS), and regional institutional pressure positively affects strategic digital strategies(STDS). (2) The forward-looking of digital change cognition enhances the impact of industry institutional pressure on SUDS, while weakening the impact of regional institutional pressure on STDS. (3) The sustainability of digital change cognition mediates the relationship between industry institutional pressure and substantive digital strategy in a U-shaped manner, and the inverted U-shaped mediates the relationship between regional institutional pressure and strategic digital strategy. The paper contributes to the theory of decoupling by revealing the selection mechanism of digital strategies, identifying the antecedent factors of decoupling from the perspective of institutional pressure, reconstructing the cognitive dimension based on the digital context, and expanding the boundary of influence by embedding a time logic.

Key words: institutional pressure, digital strategy, decoupling theory, digital change cognition

Feng Xiaobin, Zheng Hanzhong, Xiao Bowen. Why Are Manufacturing Digital Strategies Decoupled: The Differential Impact of Institutional Pressure and the Moderating Effect of Digital Change Cognition[J]. Management Review, 2026, 38(7): 44-55.

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